Spiritual Care
Your spiritual health matters
What is Spiritual Care?
Spiritual Care focuses on nurturing your spiritual health and well-being. Our department, staffed by a team of Spiritual Care Practitioners and educators, provides professional spiritual care. We offer one-to-one support, organize spiritual gatherings, rituals and celebrations, share resources and partner with volunteers, students and the community. Our focus is on providing spiritual care for St. Joseph’s patients, residents, clients and loved ones.
What is Spiritual Health?
St. Joseph’s is committed to caring for the overall well-being of everyone we serve: body, mind and spirit. This includes caring for your spiritual health. Spiritual health care is about finding meaning and purpose, understanding your identify or connectedness with humanity, nature, God or the Transcendent.
Who are Spiritual Care Practitioners (SCP)?
Spiritual Care Practitioners are important members of the healthcare team. They provide compassionate and culturally-sensitive support and counselling. SCPs have graduate level training in spirituality and counselling, and follow the certification process of the Canadian Association for Spiritual Care. Many on the team are also members of the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario.
In whatever way you understand spirituality, we are here to support you.
How can a Spiritual Care Practitioner (SCP) help you?
Respectful of all beliefs and traditions, SCPs can help by:
- Providing comfort when you are feeling overwhelmed, discouraged, isolated and anxious
- Supporting you in crisis situations that may include end-of-life, unfavourable news, change in prognoses or sudden loss
- Helping you make decisions in line with your spiritual beliefs and values
- Connecting you with the spiritual supports that are important to you
- Assessing your spiritual needs and offering choices for spiritually-focused therapeutic care, and in some areas offering spiritually-integrated psychotherapy
What other spiritual resources are available?
SCPs can help connect you with:
- Reflection and prayer spaces and Chapels
- Sacred texts, spiritual reading materials, symbols and other sacred objects
- Local spiritual communities and organizations
Clinical Psychospiritual Education
Watch the Clinical Psychospiritual Education video on YouTube
Placement Process
What is Clinical Psychospiritual Education (CPE): Clinical Psychospiritual Education (CPE) is an experiential-based educational program and provides students with rich and varied learning opportunities in the art, science and practice of spiritual care in a clinical health care setting.
With a history dating back to the 1970’s, these many years of experience in the provision of CPE courses have enabled us to continually refine and improve our experiential-based education program. We use an adult-based teaching style to build on the knowledge base our students bring to the course. Spiritual, psychological, psychotherapeutic, sociological and ethical themes are woven throughout every training unit.
Program Structure: Each CPE course is comprised of 400 hours of training. 200 of those hours are spent engaging in the clinical work of providing spiritual care to patients, family members, and staff. We foster opportunities for students to roll up their sleeves and get right to work in a variety of clinical areas across our sites. This is partnered with 200 hours of group reflective process where clinical experiences are analyzed and learned from to support integration of learning from caregiving experiences back into new clinical experiences. Written assignments also form part of the learning agenda. CPE also fosters students’ personal learning goals to help them achieve their potential in providing spiritual care to others. By working directly with patients, family and interprofessional team members from a variety of health care disciplines, students build their skills in supporting others on their own unique sacred paths. CPE courses are offered on a full-time and part-time basis. Full-time intensive CPE courses (12-14 weeks) are offered during the summer months (May-July). Part time extended CPE Course (30-32 weeks) are also an option during Fall/Winter months (running September- April) if there are a sufficient number of interested and successful applicants.
Three levels of training are offered at St. Joseph’s Health Care London:
- Basic Level CPE (2 successful Basic Units are required to move to Advanced Training)
- Advanced Level CPE (2 successful Advanced Units are required to move toward Certification as a Specialist in Pastoral Care)
- Supervisory Education for those who have achieved Specialist Certification and are interested in training as a Supervisor-Educator (CPE).
More information about professional certification is available on the CASC website.
Placement options
As St. Joseph’s Health Care is owned and operated by the St. Joseph’s Health Care Society, we are a family of four main care sites: St. Joseph’s Hospital, Parkwood Institute, Mount Hope Centre for Long Term Care, and Southwest Centre for Forensic Mental Health Care. Within these facilities, our spiritual care services encompass rehabilitation, acute ambulatory care, surgical care, specialized mental health care (including forensic mental health), long term and specialized geriatric care, veterans care, complex care, palliative care, and specialized outpatient clinics supporting a wide variety of illnesses. Our Spiritual Care Team comes from diverse faith backgrounds, and the team collaborates in the support of spiritual care students’ learning opportunities across our various locations.
Students will be offered placement opportunities at one of our sites, depending on the availability of a teaching supervisor and on a sufficient number of successful student applications. Each CPE course consists of a minimum of 3 to a maximum of 6 students.
Evaluation Process: Students are evaluated utilizing a national CASC/ACSS standardized evaluation tool that is competency based. Evaluations are completed by both the Supervisor-Educator and by the student themselves. Based on this evaluation, students will be assigned graded as either “Successful” or “Incomplete” and this grade will be recorded on student’s transcript at the school of their registration.
Accrediting Body & Professional Association: Our CPE program is accredited with CASC/ACSS (Canadian Association for Spiritual Care/Association Canadienne de soins Spirituels) as an official teaching centre for Clinical Psychospiritual Education. Our Supervisor-Educators are certified members of CASC/ACSS and are registered with the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario.
Local University affiliations for our training program include:
- Emmanual College (Toronto School of Theology)
- Huron College (University of Western Ontario)
- Knox College (Toronto School of Theology)
- Martin Luther University College (Wilfred Laurier University)
Application Process
Application to begin Clinical Psychospiritual Education is welcome from people of all world views. Some academic training in a faith or spiritual tradition is helpful but not required. A bachelor’s degree (or equivalent) is also a prerequisite for applying. See the CASC/ACSS website for information about establishing equivalency of past education and for academic requirements for advanced and supervisory training. Applications are only considered once the Application Form and all Supporting Documents have been received. Late submissions are only considered if open spaces remain in the program. The application process includes a written application, references and a face-to-face interview.
To initiate the application process, contact Stephen Yeo, Supervisor-Educator: @email
Applications for Spring/Summer Intensive CPE courses are due December 31
Applications of Fall/Winter Extended CPE courses are due May 15
Registration Process
Successful applicants will participate in the organizational orientation processes. This will include the completion of a number of e-learning modules, submission of a Vulnerable Sector Check, and a Health Review Form documenting immunizations. Student will also be registered with one of our affiliated Universities and tuition will be paid directly to the university. In addition, Students are oriented to their assigned clinical areas by the staff chaplains who cover that program/clinical unit. Didactics provide orientation to processes such as charting, spiritual assessment processes, etc.